Kevin Drum has a piece on Jeb Bush’s dirty money-making activities, including working for a company that profited from Obamacare:
I can’t help but get a chuckle out of this. In normal times, Bush would have left Tenet because it’s a big, soulless corporation that’s paid fines for Medicare fraud and been criticized for dodgy tax practices at the same time it was beefing up executive pay. A man of the people who aspires to the Oval Office can’t afford to be associated with this kind of dirty money.
But no. At least if Politico is to be believed, this isn’t really an issue in the GOP primary. What is an issue is that Tenet might have profited from Obamacare, which in turn means that Jeb may have profited from Obamacare. Even if it’s a double bank shot, that’s dirty money in tea party land.
Kevin’s right that more will be made of the Obamacare connection than Jeb’s other money making schemes, but I’m skeptical about that swaying Republican primary voters. The true believers all hated Romney, for good reason: he had a squishy relationship with abortion, he was responsible for a version of Obamacare in Massachusetts, he was a Mormon, etc. Yet he won the nomination. Bush has a lot of the same negatives as Romney, plus he carries a name that will give Democrats a chance to run against his still-unpopular brother. Still, like Romney, he’s the candidate of the GOP monied elite. That makes him the prohibitive front-runner, no matter how much Obamacare cash has fallen into his pockets. That’s how the Republican Party worked before the advent of the noble Tea Party, and that’s how it works after.
J C
We really need to start hammering home the facts about the Bush Family Crime Syndicate. No Bush should ever hold elected office again.
The Bush Family Treason
schrodinger's cat
I hope the Presidential race does not come to down to Bush vs. Clinton again. Much Nepotism, so much boring, yawn…
WereBear
I’m trying to think of a crime the Republican faithful won’t forgive.
We haven’t had any actual, provable murders, so I can’t draw a bright line…
The Gray Adder
It will still be fun watching them fall all over themselves supporting one Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain or another before coming back grumbling all the way to Jeb.
Lavocat
Plus, we’ve long since entered the realm of dynastic politics whose families have proven their worth and beholdenness to the monied elites. Anyone who isn’t a Bush or a Clinton this time around is shit-out-of-luck. Even the Cuomo-Kennedys and the R-moneys have been shut out this time around.
It should be very interesting – this far out – when it is clear which candidates are the Chosen Ones. Expect a long bloody battle on both sides. Being an independent, I intend to pull up a chair and enjoy the hell out of it, as I watch the long knives come out.
schrodinger's cat
@The Gray Adder: I have on good authority (NYT) that the nuttier flavor for this season is the good doctor, Ben Carson.
KG
Is there ever a time Politico is to be believed?
Brendan in NC
I hope you meant the “Ignoble” Tea Party… adjective
adjective: ignoble; comparative adjective: ignobler; superlative adjective: ignoblest
1. not honorable in character or purpose.
“ignoble feelings of intense jealousy”
synonyms: dishonorable, unworthy, base, shameful, contemptible, despicable, dastardly, vile, degenerate, shabby, sordid, mean; More improper, unprincipled, discreditable; humble, low, lowly, common, plebeian
Tree With Water
Every republican politician in today’s party is dirty, if not by deed then by association. I think of them all as known associates in an ongoing criminal enterprise.
hilts
OT
Congrats to Don Lemon for being recognized for his yeoman’s service to CNN in 2014
From Columbia Journalism Review’s The worst journalism of 2014:
“As one of the most recognizable anchors on CNN, Don Lemon has helped lead the cable network’s coverage of the biggest stories of the year. Live television is exceedingly difficult to produce, of course, but Lemon’s gaffes this year offer a case study in how to choose words wisely — or not.
On March 20, he asked guests whether Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could have been swallowed by a black hole: “I know it’s preposterous, but is it preposterous?” He later compared spanking children to training dogs and probed similarities between the release of US Army POW Bowe Bergdahl and the Showtime series Homeland. When an alleged Bill Cosby rape victim appeared on his show on Nov. 18, he lectured, “You know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it…Meaning the use of teeth, right?” Less than a week later, as protests turned violent in Ferguson, MO, he described the scene: “Obviously, there’s a smell of marijuana in the air.” Lemon’s job isn’t easy. But he’s earned a DART for going there.”
h/t http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/the_worst_journalism_of_2014.php
Amir Khalid
@Brendan in NC:
I think, he are being sarcastic.
SatanicPanic
@The Gray Adder: that’s where the fun will be. Jeb is boring. It’s sad that I’ll be missing the kooky charm of GWB.
Keith G
@J C: I think you are very much mistaken.
Seems to me that that attacking the Bush family will only ensure that the race is closer than it should be.
Let’s run on ideals. Let’s run on change. Let’s run on fixing things that haven’t been fixed over the last 8 years.
Let’s forget about the reputation of the Bush family and let’s build a case demonstrating the loyalties of the Republican Party.
SatanicPanic
@Keith G:
That’s a fairly risky strategy for the party in power
ruemara
@hilts: a bold step forward for LGBT and African American equality is an unlikeable hack getting the mocking he so richly deserves. Thank goddess.
@SatanicPanic: It also doesn’t work, as multitudes were told that they needed to vote to keep even the modest reforms possible in 2010 and 2014. Hint: it didn’t work for getting them to the polls. It’s not all the blame of voting restriction policies.
shelley
Ugh, still too early to start chewing over this.
I just want to see more photos of Obama wearing a tiara.
SatanicPanic
@ruemara: I think we’ll be fine in 2016. Run on “things are great! let’s keep it going!”
Keith G
@SatanicPanic: Two September’s from now will be the second full year that the Republicans have been control of Congress. We can easily establish them as a status quo power that needs to be tossed.
Also, there will be room for a certain Democratic candidate to run as a different type of leader than Obama. I think there is a chance for such a claim to find an amazing amount of support. That’s not to say Obama has not been a great leader. It’s just to say that there are characteristics about his time as chief administrator which were a bit….lacking.
Now, acknowledging that such a case can successfully be made, is not to say that there actually will be a candidate who can take advantage of such a possibility.
Baud
@shelley:
The only thing that would have made that picture better is if Obama and those little girls were engaged in a “Tea Party.”
ruemara
@SatanicPanic:yes, that worked in 2010 too. as in not.
Mike in NC
GHW Bush is in the hospital right now and I frankly don’t expect him to last into 2016. The media will indulge in an orgy of nostalgia that will in all likelihood overlook his misdeeds and whitewash his political record, giving JEB! a lift in the polls.
SatanicPanic
@Keith G: Too much explaining involved. “vote for me, I’m cool” is a winner 99% of the time.
SatanicPanic
@ruemara: I don’t remember things being great in 2010
drkrick
@KG:
When they’re talking about Village conventional wisdom, you can take their stuff to the bank.
schrodinger's cat
I don’t know about everyone else, but Bush’s running makes the Villagers very happy. They (Judy Woodruff and her panel) were practically giddy with excitement when she announced Jebbie’s candidacy.
ruemara
@SatanicPanic: Compared to 2008, they were getting better. Problem is, people want turnarounds like they want thin thighs. 30 days or less. Not gonna happen. Conservatives played a very long game of overtaking local, state then federal seats. It took them decades to get back to where they are now. Look at them. More powerful than ever. Liberals, the ones with the clever and the long view and the nuance and the save the planet for the future, can’t show the fuck up for 4 straight years. Wonderful.
cmorenc
@Keith G: If Elizabeth Warren is the prime “different type of leader” you’re elliptically referring to, if she did run and win (or even get realistically close to winning) the Democratic nomination, she’d very quickly be subjected to the media’s sickening ability to be easily distracted by trivial, irrelevant, and often false details allegedly about her, rather than matters of substantive importance or even valid elements of character. Her having been a professor at Harvard will get morphed into a sneeringly derisive character deficit,, and she probably has some very casual, brief associations with folks that will be turned into the 2016 version of Bill Ayers, and some fellow faculty member or someone she collaborated with as co-author of some paper will be morphed into Saul Alinsky. The media will again display how easily they are led into repeating and amplifying and focusing on GOP talking points and smears, instead of actual substance.
Meanwhile, Jeb Bush will benefit from the media’s reflexive inclination to include the adjective “moderate Republican” with Jeb’s name, as if that’s on his birth certificate, whereas the media will reflexively add “Liberal Democrat” as an adjective to Elizabeth Warren’s name as if that was on her birth certificate.
SatanicPanic
@ruemara:
In the end it doesn’t matter if their expectations were realistic or not. They hadn’t been met in 2010. They have been met in 2014. Things changed.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
The prez in a tiara.
That is just wrong. Tea or no tea.
Now, that pic from 2012 with Ms. Maroney… that is a bit more to my liking.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/president-obama-and-olympic-gymnast-mckayla-maroney-are-not-impressed/
Hungry Joe
While I don’t claim to possess an overly long memory, I do recall something about the GOP’s being dead, finished, kaput after they shut down the government way, way back … gosh, it was a whole year ago. I believe popcorn was mentioned.
Damn near anything can happen between now and November 2016, and predictions about the future are just about always wrong. Who saw Obama coming in 2003? Did anyone even suggest, when we made it to the moon, that we’d go a few more times, then never go back? What would you have thought, a dozen years ago, if someone had said, “Tattoos. Just wait,” or “Try to hold on — craft brews are on the way”?
Jay C
@Brendan in NC:
Fixed.
Keith G
@cmorenc: Warren’s ideas are part of a larger portfolio of aggressively populist issues which are very potent and important for the Democratic Party, but she is not the only one who can deliver them.
And much as I like her and what she is about, I’m not sure she would be the best candidate for the Democratic Party, but I am willing to revise that if she gets into it and shows she has the goods.
mclaren
Surely you mean “That makes him the putative front-runner…”
Or possibly: “That makes him the pre-emptive front-runner…”
Fred
For the GOP there is no such thing as Dirty Money. Money, big gobs of it is like holy water, it is pure and it washes clean and redeems all sins and transgressions.
If you’re born with truck loads of Nazi gold in the family vault that’s OK. If you break a thousand laws on Wall Street putting widows and orphans on the street to get your billions, you are a job creator. If you order the torture of poor guys who you paid a bounty for to some other guy to get in your prison ’cause somebody says he’s a suspected terrorist, but you have plenty of money…well you are Dick Cheney or GW Bush and your life is good.
There is no crime too heinous if it results in a big enough stack of loot in your bank account. Willy Sutton’s problem was he didn’t steal enough.
ruemara
@SatanicPanic: Nonsense that realistic expectations don’t matter. Because nothing much is better at 2014 than it was at 2010, when much of the groundwork for the improvement was laid. Whatever, our views on this will not ever come to any agreement. Especially as I view the lack of realistic expectations, goals and common fucking sense as the biggest flaws of any sort of progressive, liberal etc. coalition.
@schrodinger’s cat: Of course it does. He’s their kind of scum.
RSR
The Tea Party hates Common Core education reform, too. (They’re right, but for the wrong reasons.) But again, there’s serious money to be made and thrown around via education reform, so I don’t see this issue being a problem for the ‘GOP monied elite’ either.
Mike J
@J C:
We could do that, but raging about Prescott Bush makes you sound like an unhinged loon.
Jeb is bad enough on his own. It doesn’t matter how good or bad his family is. Even Ghandi had a brother who robbed liquor stores and stole cars. Probably.
Are you responsible for everything anybody in your family has ever done?
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah me too. Look I don’t dislike Hillary. Seems a nice enough lady. Clearly smart and capable. I just can’t handle another Clinton/Bush in the White House.
schrodinger's cat
BTW completely OT, but my first attempt at seafood gumbo was mostly a success, thanks to the good advice many here gave me.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: Very nice. As somebody that has spent a ton of time living in Louisiana even happier to see you cook that food. A good thing to pass off to your kids. We don’t do Gumbo this time of year but I’ve brought a few Lousiana things back to Illinois. One is fried oysters are always on the menu for the holidays. Two navy or “white” beans for New Years. It is a good luck kind of thing.
I will end with I don’t think I’ve ever had Gumbo with mussels. You are spoiling people :). The history of the dish is it was a poor person’s dish. They just threw in whatever they had. I don’t think most of them had mussels.
srv
@schrodinger’s cat: Yummy. But I burn my fingers shelling crawfish.
Alex S.
I am not so sure that Jeb has all the GOP money behind him (Romney doesn’t seem to retreat, more than before, now that Jeb is in the race.) In fact, I’d say that there are three camps: the House of Bush, the Romney camp and the Koch network. The House of Bush is the old GOP, the oil money, the for-profit education money (the Bushs always made education a priority) or Bush senior’s old connections (national security, health care). Mitt Romney represents the vulture class that flourished after the Reagan/Clinton deregulation, insurance companies and the financial sector. The Koch money is trying to capture the GOP now. I would guess that a Bush/Walker ticket is the likeliest solution because it combines two of those camps. I guess that the Romney money is not particularly interested in the politics but just seeks to drain some money of the government for itself. It will only become a factor if the Koch apparatus and the old school GOP tear each other down.
There’s also the evangelical money but its impact is decreasing.
Tommy
@srv: I mean this with all due respect, but as somebody that has been to dozens if not hundreds of crawfish boils, how do you burn our fingers. I think you are doing something wrong :)!
satby
Saw the first Carson 2016 bumper sticker today, on an Escalade driven by some (older than me) old doofus. I was laughing so hard I nearly drove off the road.
Yatsuno
@satby: I want their Super March Tuesday to descend into complete chaos. For there to be no clear winner until the very last minute. And if this means a Hillary coronation I’ll take it, because no matter what they’ll have a helluva time producing a winner.
srv
@Tommy: When I have to dip my fingers into the boiling gumbo to pull out the crawfish.
I suck heads, but I don’t eat unshelled crawfish.
rikyrah
For Recent Black College Graduates, a Tougher Road to Employment
BOB MILLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
DECEMBER 24, 2014
William Zonicle did what all the job experts advise. He majored in a growing field like health care. He studied hard and took time to develop relationships with his professors. Most important, he obtained a great internship in the human resources department at Florida Hospital in Tampa the summer before his senior year.
But more than seven months after receiving his diploma from Oakwood University, a historically black religious school in Huntsville, Ala., Mr. Zonicle is still without a job in his field. Instead, he is working part-time for $7.60 an hour at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in the center of town.
“It was tougher than I expected,” said Mr. Zonicle, 23, who applied for jobs at hospitals and nursing homes from Ohio to Florida after graduating in May. “Because of the work I had put in as an undergraduate, and making connections, I thought it would be easier to find a decent position.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/business/for-recent-black-college-graduates-a-tougher-road-to-employment.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2&referrer=
rikyrah
Bay Area official censured for remarks: ‘I’m sorry that I keep saying little n*gger babies’
26 DEC 2014 AT 10:19 ET
An elected member of the Oro Loma Sanitary District in California has been censured by his fellow board member for liberal use of the ‘n-word’ and additional racist and sexist remarks to employees of the district, according to KPIX
Laython Landis, 88, an elected member of the board for 42 years, was censured by fellow board members after he made racist comments during a public meeting.
Referring to heavy rains in the Bay Area, Landis reportedly told the assembled members and audience, “It looks like it’s going to rain cats and dogs and n*gger babies today.”
According to board president Tim Becker, the problems with Landis go well beyond a single comment.
“Mr. Landis has made sexist comments to our female district staff. And it’s simply becoming more and more of a pattern of behavior,”Becker said.
Landis says there is nothing wrong with his comments, that he has spoken like this for years and his expressions are the product of a different era.
“I don’t know, it just comes out,” Landis said. “You know, ‘cats and dogs and little n*gger babies’ is about as old as I am.”
Landis — who says he is not a racist — claimed he was sorry, saying “I apologized to people who are offended when I keep saying little n*gger babies.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/bay-area-official-censured-for-remarks-im-sorry-that-i-keep-saying-little-ngger-babies/
PurpleGirl
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: I like the picture of President Obama with the Girl Scouts and they are all wearing tiaras. They all have these great big grins and I think the grins, especially his, are infectious.
chopper
@WereBear:
ben carson only attempted murder. while black, even. and he’s fine by them.
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
I wonder about all the unease at the idea of Hillary running in 2016. At her worst, Hillary would be a hundred times better as President than any conceivable Republican nominee. My only worry is Candidate Hillary, who has already come off second best at this level before.
Tommy
@srv: I get the suck the head. A religion in doing that. But when do you pull a crawfish out of boiling water?
srv
@Tommy: See the pic schrodinger posted. I don’t see any ice cubes.
chopper
@srv:
oh, come on.
chopper
@rikyrah:
if we keep pumping derp into the political system, the energy levels will allow shit like this to be both real and satire at the same time.
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: Mussels are not that expensive on the east coast. Last week they were on sale about $3.00 a pound.
mtiffany
Jeb’s running makes a great counter-slogan “Are you voting for Bush because you think the third time‘s the charm?”
SatanicPanic
@ruemara:
what do you mean? the economy is better, more people have health insurance, etc. More importantly, people think things are better.
rikyrah
Richard, do you know anything about this situation?
…………..
N. J. Medicaid fiasco: Thousands stranded without coverage, no fix in sight
By Kathleen O’Brien | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on December 23, 2014 at 7:15 AM, updated December 23, 2014 at 10:16 AM
The doctor was perfectly clear after examining Aurora Blackwell’s son this fall: The boy needed to get to an emergency room for his worsening digestive problems.
Instead, Blackwell took the 4-year-old home and treated him herself — first with prune juice, then suppositories.
Why would the devoted young mother of two ignore her pediatrician’s advice? Because the Burlington County woman knew that despite 10 months of phone calls, emails and letters, her family still lacked health insurance.
“I feel helpless,” she’d written two months earlier in a plea to Gov. Chris Christie. “How much longer do we have to wait?”
The meltdown of the federal government’s website tied to the Affordable Care Act has been well documented. But in New Jersey, something far worse was happening as the state expanded Medicaid access under Obamacare, an NJ Advance Media investigation has found.
In New Jersey, where so many are surrounded by privilege, an estimated 11,000 people are still trapped in a tangle of digital red tape and a bureaucratic maze. These families are unable to enroll in the state’s Medicaid program, leaving them in limbo for months and, in some cases, almost a year. And unlike the federal government, which has solved many of its website problems, New Jersey has yet to announce any permanent solution.
The stunning computer failure at the center of New Jersey’s crisis already has forced the exit of one vendor, left countless boxes stuffed with confidential enrollment data piled in the corridors of county offices and forced workers to rekey data into county computers that cannot interface directly with the state’s 1980s-era main system.
“We’ve gone back to the Stone Age,” said Ellen Vidal, president of the Communications Workers of America unit that staffs the Ocean County Board of Social Services. Her county’s Medicaid backlog over the summer hovered at 4,000.
http://www.nj.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2014/12/medicaid_backlog.html
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: Landis asshole needs to be permanently retired. 88 years old, seriously?
KG
@Mike J: more importantly, if you have to argue against someone not in the race in an election, that means you’ve got nothing on the person you’re running against. that’s what the Republicans did with Obama and what they’re planning to do against Hillary. Running against Prescott Bush (who most people don’t know without the help of wikipedia) or GHW Bush (which looks foolish since it’ll have been almost a quarter century and three subsequent administrations since he’d been president) or even GW Bush (slightly more relevant but still you’d be arguing stuff that is somewhere around a decade old) plays into Jeb’s (and the GOP’s) hands. It allows them the chance to say “the Democrats have nothing, so they are attacking history, they’re not looking forward, they’re looking backwards.”
And Jeb isn’t going to be foolish enough to run on his family’s record anyway. That makes you look weak too, because it means that you don’t have anything on your resume that’s worthy (in a way, this is the error that Hillary made in 2008 and may end up making again). He has to establish himself as his own person, and the more you attack his family, the easier you make it for him to do that.
Mike J
Any windows gurus around? I think I need to rewrite the mbr on a win7 system. Recovery enviroment won’t load (says incompatible version?), partition wizard bootable cd kernel panics. I can boot into linux off a thumb drive and read the non-booting drive just fine.
The install didn’t use UEFI. /dev/sda has 3 partitions, sda1 100MB fat32 (21mb used), sda2 128MB unknown/unformatted,sda3 2TB ntfs, where all my data is. sda1 and 3 both have boot flags visible in gparted., sda2 has msftres flag.
KG
@Mike J: trying to start a flame war the day after christmas?
Doug r
@WereBear: I dunno just ask Laura Bush’s ex.
SatanicPanic
@KG: I think you could against him with “do you want another Iraq?” but anything more complicated than that would be stupid. And for obvious reasons even that would be a tough message for Hillary to deliver. Maybe “every time we elect a Bush we get a recession” would be a good zinger.
The reason I wouldn’t put money on Jeb is because our country has shown a strong reluctance to elect boring white men as president. In fact, the last one I can remember is GWHB, and that was because voters had to choose between two boring white dudes. If Hillary can just be not boring she’ll be a shoo-in.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
@chopper:
Even if Mr Landis is a child of racist and sexist times, those times are long over. I’m just wondering why this racist and sexist old coot still keeps getting elected.
ruemara
@Amir Khalid: If there’s nothing we adore, it’s the wonderful euphoria we get from whine. That’s what the collective dread is about. It’s going to be a 20 month orgasm of unhappiness from every purportedly liberalish blog and twitter feed.
schrodinger's cat
@srv: No craw fish for you, then. You can eat the mussels and the shrimp.
Ruckus
@mtiffany:
What if the answer is Yes! ?
mclaren
@Fred:
There. Fixed that for you.
Source: “Obama Received $20 Million from Healthcare Industry in 2008 Campaign,” CommonDreams.org, 12 January 2010.
Now we know why Obama declared the public option “off the table” in 2009 after running on the public option in 2008 — a 20 million dollar bribe from the U.S. medical-industrial complex did the trick.
Vice President Joe Biden is even more corrupt than Obama: not content with merely taking bribes, Joe Biden actively set up multiple scams and eagerly participated in outright nepotism:
Source: “Vice President Joe Biden’s son joins Ukraine gas company,” BBC News online, 14 May 2014.
Source: The Washington Post, 24 August 2008.
Source: “Crony capitalism and Joe Biden’s Brother,” New York Post, 23 October, 2012.
Source: “The Military-Industrial Candidate: Hillary Clinton prepares to launch the most formidable hawkish presidential campaign in a generation,” The American Conservative, 20 November 2014.
Source: “Mama Warbucks: Hillary Clinton brings home the dollars for New York’s defense contractors,” The Village Voice, 26 April 2005.
KG
@SatanicPanic: that’s a good point about boring people being elected president. i’m just not sure Hillary can avoid being boring because she is so very risk adverse.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
@PurpleGirl:
My innate guy-ness says that guys do not wear tiaras.
Fat guys wear Speedos. Whatever.
Bald guys wear bad toupees. If that floats yer boat, do it.
Older guys drive incredibly expensive cars (and dress like Don Johnson in a Miami Vice time warp). If you got the cash, do it.
Neil Patrick Harris sings show tunes. Not my cup of tea, but hey… not that there’s anything wrong with that.
No tiaras, though.
Baud
@ruemara:
Not a bad candidate for the rotating tag line.
SatanicPanic
@KG: hopefully she can get lessons from Bill
mclaren
@Amir Khalid:
If you’re comfortable with John McCain and Newt Gingrich running U.S. foreign policy, you’ll have no problem with Hillary Clinton as president.
The rest of us…not so much.
Hillary is also deeply in love with the authoritarian panopticon surveillance and infinitely growing police-prison-military-surveillence-torture complex that has now reduced America to a garrison state under undeclared martial law, so look forward for the rest of America to turn into Ferguson Missouri if Hillary becomes prez.
Source: “The Left Must Derail Hillary Clinton in the Primaries,” Harpers magazine, 13 March 2014.
Yatsuno
@KG: It is Boxing Day after all.
PurpleGirl
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: LOL. I won’t try to make you wear a tiara then.
BBA
@Amir Khalid: He’s on the sanitary district board. I’d imagine most people in the district don’t give two seconds’ thought to how they’ll vote for the sanitary district board. Hell, most people in the district probably don’t even know they have a sanitary district board to vote for.
Buddy H
Republicans vote out of spite and fear. It will be Bush vs. Clinton, and Bush will win. He will serve two terms. Mainstream media (meaning the media the vast majority of the population consumes) will call him a moderate, but he will quietly push through Koch policies. Balloon-Juice, Charlie Pierce, Media Matters will scream, but the networks and cable shows will support him.
This is my prediction. He’ll privatize social security, and I’ll be working until I’m 85, unless I drop dead at my post first.
schrodinger's cat
Speaking of mussels, I cooked some in beer, along with some garlic and sliced onions and sausage. I am going to serve it over TJ’s spinach fettucine. With a green salad and cannelini beans on the side. And then watching the Monsoon Wedding on the DVR.
rikyrah
What We Can Learn From Ella Baker In A Post-Ferguson Era
ByPETER DREIER
Published DECEMBER 26, 2014, 6:00 AM EST
In 1964, at the height of the civil rights movement, the organizer Ella Baker said: “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.” Bernice Johnson Reagon later wrote “Ella’s Song” based on those words, made famous by the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Baker’s words continue to resonate today, as we witness the resurgence of a new civil rights movement, sparked by the police killings of young black men, but rooted in the underlying grievances of racial injustice around jobs, housing, schools, and the criminal justice system. As the protests spread from Ferguson to cities around the country, today’s young activists can learn much from Baker’s ideas. Working behind the scenes, she helped transform the Southern sit-in protests into a powerful movement for racial justice, led by young people with lots of anger and determination, but little political experience.
Late in the afternoon of February 1, 1960, four young black men—Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil, all students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro—visited the local Woolworth’s store. They purchased school supplies and toothpaste, and then they sat down at the store’s lunch counter and ordered coffee. “I’m sorry,” said the waitress. “We don’t serve Negroes here.”
The students refused to give up their seats until the store closed. The local media reported the sit-in on television and in the newspapers. The four students returned the next day with more students. By February 5, about 300 students had joined the protest, generating more media attention and inspiring students at other colleges. By the end of March, sit-ins had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Many students, mostly black but also white, were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct, or disturbing the peace.
Over Easter weekend, April 16 to 18, many of those students came to Baker’s alma mater, Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., to discuss how to capitalize on the growing momentum. The fruit of the meeting was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which would expand the sit-in campaign, but also use other tactics, including freedom rides and voter registration drives, to dismantle segregation. SNCC reinvigorated the civil rights movement.
Many accounts report that the Greensboro protest “sparked” or “catalyzed” the sit-in movement that led to SNCC’s founding. But in the middle of all this was Ella Baker, a 57-year old veteran organizer. She had spent decades traveling throughout the South for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Long before there were Rolodexes, email, and Facebook, she was famous for her vast social network. She gently encouraged the young activists to build a movement from these isolated local protests.
Many of the young civil rights activists called her “Fundi,” a Swahili title for a master technician who oversees apprentices, to acknowledge Baker’s role as their mentor. She eschewed a visible role, concentrating on patiently training the next generation of social change leaders.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/ella-baker-in-a-ferguson-era
Villago Delenda Est
Jeb is like every other member of the Bush Crime Family: without the slightest ethical or moral bone in his body.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Fred:
At one time, it seemed to matter whether money was dirty or not. At least when it came to beating Democrats over the head about a fundraiser at a certain Buddhist temple…
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some Republican candidate got caught taking a boatload of money from foreign sources in the 2016 cycle. Lots of Adelson’s wealth came from his casino in Macau. There are lots of billionaires in the world who would just love their personal advocate in DC. Foreign contributions are still illegal, and I don’t think Americans think that is a bad law, so they better be careful…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Aargh. I wrote the bad cashino word and am stuck in moderation. Help?
Cheers,
Scott.
kindness
I’ve noticed a subtle difference in Kevin’s Posts. It seems to me where he used to be much more willing to give the right the benefit of the doubt when faced with 1) the right’s penchant for brazen hypocrisy when wanting to strangle any program that might benefit the economy (infrastructure) while being more than willing to throw additional tax cuts to the uber wealthy on the nation’s credit card, 2) The right’s ‘Individual Rights’ obfuscation of not wanting the federal government to regulate anything while the right joins the fundies of gutting women’s birth control options and 3) Foreign policy. The right’s craven baldness of lying regarding their own acts vs. a black President’s actions.
Kevin is calling them on it more now. I like that. I think there can be such a thing as a middle of the road moderate who isn’t selling out principles.
KG
@SatanicPanic: I wouldn’t be surprised if she learned to be risk adverse because of Bill
NotMax
@Satanic Panic
Putting all else aside and looking solely at boring as a criterion while a candidate prior to winning election, within living memory of the oldest living today we’ve got:
Wilson
Harding
Coolidge
Hoover
Truman (arguably)
Eisenhower
Nixon
G. H. W. Bush
G. W. Bush
(I leave out Ford as he was never elected prez.)
Just missing the cut (albeit an arbitrary decision) are Reagan and Carter (looking at their time as candidates, not at any performance or lack thereof once elected).
@Satanic Panic
One politician here (out of office at present, thankfully) has always run ads which when parsed come out to “Vote for me, I’m tall.”
drkrick
@Amir Khalid:
The quote mentioned that he’s been getting worse. Probably a case of advancing dementia.
People vote for people like this out of force of habit. I don’t think Strom Thurmond knew where he was most of his last term or two in the Senate, but South Carolina would still be reelecting him if they could.
SatanicPanic
@KG: heh touche
SteveinSC
@Villago Delenda Est: Memo from Lee Atwater’s Ghost “Let’s not forget Coumba Bush’s buying/smuggling spree and their drug-crazed daughter.”
El Caganer
@schrodinger’s cat: One of the many great things about mussels is their love for any kind of alcohol: you can cook them in beer or wine (I’ve used vermouth with great results), throw a tablespoon of scotch into a non-alcoholic steaming liquid…it’s all good. They work with most any kind of spices and herb, too.
SatanicPanic
@NotMax: I wouldn’t call GWB boring. But you notice that most of those were before the TV age, and Carter and George HW were against other boring dudes. Look at all the people who lost, basically the only non-boring dudes I can remember that lost are FWIW McCain and Ross Perot.
Howard Beale IV
No Red.
No Blue.
Go Green.
Make your government fear you.
KG
@efgoldman: I’m not sure it’s “dumb”. Most people don’t have the time/energy/interest in local elections, partly because they don’t know why the local offices are responsible for. Not voting in those elections is, essentially, a wise allocation of limited resources.
Anne Laurie
@Tommy: Unless your Scottish ancestors were all highlanders, they most certainly did eat mussels — they were the ultimate shoreland poor peoples’ protein along the North Atlantic, since even small children could collect them from the rocks at low tide.
Kay
@RSR:
Common Core could still come back and hurt Bush not because of any principled conservative objection to federal control of schools (which is bullshit that won’t matter) but because Common Core proponents weren’t honest about it.
Common Core (the wonderful theory) will become The Common Core Tests this spring (the much less wonderful reality). The tests will be high stakes for students. That’s how states will use them, to make high stakes decisions for students. States aren’t going to spend millions of dollars on a national test without tying every decision in the world to the results of the high stakes test. Jeb probably should have mentioned that part to parents. “High standards” are one thing. Promotion from third to fourth grade is another. It’s a HUGE omission.
This is what happened when they pegged the GED to the Common Core:
Now, no one really gives a shit about the group of people who take the GED, they have no political power, but a lot of people send their kids to public schools where the much more difficult Common Core test will be used as a measure of students by states in all kinds of ways. This spring. 2015. So, we’ll see if Jeb is out of the woods on that.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alex S.:
There are a lot of same-or-similarly-named people in politics, some related, some not. For instance, Scott Brown, Scott Walker, Rick Scott. Rick Perry, Rick Scott, Rich Santorum, Rick Snyder. Ron and Rand Paul, Paul Ryan. Charlie Crist, Chris Christie, Christie Todd Whitman, Meg Whitman. There are plenty of others; these are just a few that come to mind immediately.
But I never before noticed this additional Scott Walker-George (Herbert) Walker Bush connection. This is getting scary.
J R in WV
@Mike J: Use Linux booted off a thumb drive (you said that works!) to retrieve all your data onto an external drive, then install Linux and format everything while you do the install.
There are allegedly ways to install Linux while saving existing data, but I’ve not had much success with that. So you should extract your data at the first opportunity onto a new and well reviewed external drive, where you can keep it as a back up long term. Then you can experiment without that downside of losing everything staring at you from the corner behind you.
eric nny
@WereBear: getting a bj from an intern
mclaren
@NotMax:
Should’ve left out the Drunk-Driving Coke-Snorting C-Student, since he was never elected prez either.
Villago Delenda Est
@mclaren: Massive post of this length, repeatedly, are surely grounds for getting the boot, without regard to the contents.
mclaren
@ruemara:
Let’s get real, shall we? Conservatives (AKA batshit insane fringe reactionary lunatics) are mostly single-issue voters. These people will crawl to the polls over broken glass on voting day just in order to cast the ballot against gay marriage, or against gun control, or against [fill in sane public policy here].
If the Republican Party could figure out a way to put something like “breathing” or “eating food” on the ballot, their base would go into a frenzy to vote against it.
You just don’t get that level of tunnel-vision fanatical lunacy from liberals.
mclaren
@Villago Delenda Est:
Infantile posts this shallow, repeatedly, are surely grounds for getting the boot, without regard to the contents.
ts;cts
(Too shallow; can’t take seriously)
catclub
@WereBear: Ex Senator Larry Craig (R-not deep enough in closet) might know.
catclub
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
except if they are made to a 504 ‘non-profit’ that does not have to reveal its donors, how are foreign donations stopped? Self-deporting of the money?
I cannot believe that the democrats do not point out this on a regular basis. maybe they are getting ( or would like to get) foreign money too.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@catclub: It’s a big problem, agreed. The rules are explicit and reasonably clear. We can’t assume that candidates aren’t going to cross the line if they think they aren’t going to get caught…
Cheers,
Scott.
Villago Delenda Est
@mclaren: You don’t seem to appreciate that others DO NOT appreciate really long posts like that.
The content is irrelevant to my comment. Your judgement in posting endless text is.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t like ruemaras copy and pastes either but I don’t see you complaining about that.
What I really dislike are small-dicked hall monitors like you telling everyone what they can and cannot say. Piss off.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Those copy-and-pastes in this thread aren’t ruemara’s. If you’re going to bitch about other posters, at least get the names right.
Xenos
@catclub: I would like to think that the Democrats are saving the foreign money accusations in reserve until they can be used to take a republican out after a nomination. That is the sort of thing a well-run political party would do.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
It wasn’t that long, in my view, plus the excerpts were short and sources were noted.
Not sure who is in your army of nameless “others,” but can’t you just scroll past a comment you don’t want to read? Complaining about its very existence gives the impression that you are somehow threatened by it — which, if you are, perhaps you should explain.